Business Social - a Small Business Perspective
In past, the yellow pages like www.yellowpages.com have helped small businesses reach out to customers. The Internet has further intensified the connection, as people can narrow down there search at a faster pace. Yelp and Google are two examples. People can search for most things on these two search engines (Yelp being a business listing search engine). But small businesses still largely depend on printed advertisements, customer drop ins and references.
Yellow pages provide a very vague picture of the quality of the businesses and a few bad ratings or no ratings at all, can largely mislead the customer. The ratings displayed on sites such as www.yellowpages.com are user ratings and are added without moderation or authentication of the source. The largest problem is the ability for the customer to search endlessly for what they want at the best quality and price. Due to this small businesses lose to large retailers because they don’t have the ability to reach out effectively. What is the solution to this? How can the web be used to benefit the small business?
Unlike an enterprise, the small business has the advantage of having the face of most of the employees close by and a part of the community. The thought of a small business having a profile is clearly understandable. The profile of the business can act just like a personal profile since small businesses are, largely, personal. So what if small businesses and people were put together in one central and not only could people actively seek the small businesses, the small businesses could also seek the people. The two sides could “friend” each other and each could provide status updates, etc. When both sides can interact together, both sides benefit. Lets say someone needs a bike, at a great price, and they have “friended” many small bike sellers in the area. They can update their status, and claim that they need a bike. All the bike sellers will see this, as well as all the other status updates people display. They can then congregate online and discuss the options. An extreme example of collaboration, for a bike, something that is in parts, people can work with various small bike sellers. For example, one bike seller can provide the bike and another accessories. This can all be done in a discussion board. There are many possibilities when both sides become active in a central location. It begins real time information exchange.
